Faculty
Artistic Director / Lead Choreographer
Giana Krieger began her dance training in Dundalk, MD at age four. At the age of thirteen Giana began her technical training at b.funk Dance Company where she studied ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, musical theatre, and hip-hop. During her time at b.funk she was also a member of their competition team and trained under the direction of Angela Worley, Becky Funk, Jen Combest, Desiree Koontz- Nachtrieb and Lauren Weber. Giana finished her training at Savage Dance Company where she was a member of their award-winning competition team. During her time at Savage Giana trained under Nichole Savage, Brandy Fry, Alexandra Tyler, and Brandon Russell. While competing Giana won many awards and overalls at the regional and national level. After Giana graduated high school, she began teaching for local studios in the Baltimore area. During this time, she began choreographing for their competitive teams with all ages and levels. Giana’s pieces have won many overall awards, special judges awards, and entertainment awards. In 2019 Giana’s work was accepted into the Ascending Choreographers Festival. When Giana is not working with her home studios, she spends her time subbing for other studios and even as a master guest teacher at local studios. Giana has continued her educational studies at the University of Baltimore where she is pursuing a degree in Business.
Giana Krieger
Vadim Bogomolov
Vadim Bogomolov is a graduate of the world-famous A. Y. Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. He completed the full 8 years of professional Ballet Academy training with coursework including Classical Ballet, Variations, Pas-de-Deux, Character Dance, Historical/Courtly Dance, Ethics, Esthetics, Piano, Repertoire (including participation in professional ballet performances at the Mariinsky Ballet Theater), as well as histories of music, arts, ballet, and ancient and modern world theatres. Mr. Bogomolov studied with some of the most famous and world renown ballet teachers, including N. Serebrenyakov, I. Gensler, O. Sokolov. After graduating, he enjoyed a spectacular career as a ballet dancer. His professional repertoire includes Paquita pas de trois, Nutcracker Cavalier, Albrecht (Giselle), Prince (Cinderella) and many more. Mr. Bogomolov is the recipient of the title of “Ballet Master” awarded by the Moscow State Academy of Choreography (Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow) upon successful completion of their program in ballet pedagogy (the Russian methodology for teaching ballet). As a teacher he has worked at several ballet and dance schools and has enjoyed setting a number of full-length ballets including Giselle, Cinderella, and Nutcracker. He has coached award winning students for ballet competitions including Youth America Grand Prix.
Vadim Bogomolov
Kamali Hill
Kamali Hill is a dance artist whose work is rooted in celebrating and elevating people of African descent. Her works have been presented by Dissonance Dance Theater (District of Columbia), Deeply Rooted Dance Theater (Chicago, IL), and The Center for Civil and Human Rights (Atlanta, GA). She has also had the privilege of collaborating with artists such as T. Lang Dance (Atlanta, GA), Okwae A. Miller and Artists, and Otis Sallid (Atlanta, GA). Hill has had the opportunity to serve as an educator and administrator in institutions such as Texas Woman’s University (Denton, TX), The University of Southern Mississippi (Hattiesburg, MS), the Dance Institute of Washington (Washington, DC), The Maryland Academy of Dance (Owings Mills, MD), CityDance (Atlanta, GA), Covington Regional Ballet (Covington, GA), Dekalb School for the Arts (Decatur, GA), and the District of Columbia Public Charter Schools (Washington, DC),. Hill received her MFA in Dance from Texas Woman’s University and BFA in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Kamali Hill
Shawn “SHOGUN” Stevens
Shawn “SHOGUN” Stevens has been b-boy’n (breakin’) since 1996. He is the co-founder and acting president of the Deadly Venoms Crew. His crew has competed in many competitions on the east coast. They are responsible for rebuilding the bboys’ status in the Baltimore club scene. Shawn has performed with hip hop legends Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, Special Ed, Talib Kweli, and RUN DMC. At Bboy Jam Unbreakable 3 Shawn received a special Bboy honors award for representing bboyn’ hardcore for the last 14 years in the DMV area. Past students of his have included former faculty members Jamile McGee (“So You Think You Can Dance” 2nd runner up Season 1), and Ben Gonzales.
Shawn is involved with the Competitive Break’n League for Kids and Rock the Box National Championship.
Shawn “SHOGUN” Stevens
Kennedy Suber
Kennedy is a recent graduate from North County High School and will be attending Anne Arundel Community College where she is majoring in CyberCrime. Kennedy started dancing at the age of 6 years old and ever since then dance has always been a huge part of her life. Kennedy has danced at several different studios during her dance career where she was a member of their competition teams. During her high school dance career, she was a member of their Varsity Dance Company. During Kennedy’s senior year at JAMZ she assisted several different classes which is when she discovered how much she wanted to teach. Most recently, Kennedy has become a certified Flexistretcher Instructor and will be implementing the new class to JAMZ this season.
Kennedy Suber
Teanna Tang
Teanna Tang began dancing in Baltimore, MD at the age of 4, studying ballet, tap, jazz, and traditional Chinese dance. In high school, she was able to join the senior dance company for 4 years and eventually became an “All-County” dancer her senior year. In 2016, she started focusing on hip hop, training with Phunktions Collegiate Dance Company, Culture Shock Washington D.C., and Laura Edwards Dance Company. Teanna attended the University of Maryland, College Park and graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Sciences. Outside of dance, she enjoys playing the piano, playing with animals, and drinking bubble tea. Fun fact: Teanna is a former Miss Maryland East Coast USA winner!
Teanna Tang
Katie Griffith
Katie Griffith spent her entire youth doing gymnastics. She doesn’t remember a time before gymnastics. As her mother says, “Katie was born a gymnast”. Katie trained and in her teen years taught at Docksiders Gymnastics in Millersville Maryland. She ended her gymnastics career in 2000 as the Anne Arundel County Champion, Maryland State Champion and Team Captain of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Team. Following her 18-year gymnastics career, Katie attended Springfield College in Springfield Massachusetts. She graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Therapeutic Recreation and Certified as a Recreation Therapist. For the past 15 years Katie has worked in the healthcare field as a Recreation Therapist and Dementia Specialist. Last year Katie made the decision to leave healthcare to order to dedicate her time to us here at JAMZ. Along with Acro, Katie is an instructor for our new Bungee Fitness Program and soon to come, Toddler Fitness.
Katie Griffith
Zoe Kirk
Zoe is an award-winning dancer and choreographer with a passion for dance! From her early fascination of hip-hop and breaking at the age of six to jazz, contemporary, musical theater, lyrical, tap and ballet—she enjoys the challenge of creating a piece and telling a story with the ultimate goal of connecting with the audience through the art of dance.
She has danced for 12 years and competitively for 11 years. She is a senior this year and dances on Jamz’s tech and crew teams. She has been a member of the National Honor Society for Dance, has assisted the director and instructors teaching during that time and has volunteered her time to assist in any way she can for whatever Jamz undertakes. She currently teaches tap and hip-hop classes. She also assists the director with choreography for a few of the competitive dance team pieces at Jamz. She looks forward to furthering her career in the profession after she graduates—wherever it may take her!
Zoe has earned numerous awards, scholarships and recognition for her dances. Most notably two 1st Place Overall for her solos in the senior category at two regional competitions. And she wrapped up this past season with a 1st place Senior National Title Winner at Beyond the Stars Nationals. Recently while attending a commercial dance intensive in Los Angles, she received a walk-on invitation to attend Loyola Marymount College in LA for dance and entertainment with no audition.
Zoe Kirk
Kellie Wisthoff
A graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academic in NYC, Kellie’s passion for the performing arts was obvious at the age of 3 when she took her first ballet class. Soon after, she began training in acting, singing and various styles of dance (tap, jazz, lyrical, modern, hip hop, theater, pointe, etc.) Growing up in Maryland, she trained and competed with local dance studios including The Olney Studio of Dance, Edna Lee Dance Studio and Advance Dance Academy. Along with dancing, she worked with vocal instructor Polly Parr Corretjer of Bowie, MD, and competed in the Musical Theatre and Opera categories at state wide vocal competitions. Kellie also kept busy performing with local theaters over those years including Burn Brae Dinner Theatre, Annapolis Summer Garden Theater, Dance Impressions, Children’s Theater of Annapolis, Traveling Young Actors and The Drama Learning Center. At 16, while serving as Miss Teen Maryland 1999, Kellie was accepted into the Bound for Broadway Summer Intensive Program at the New Dance Group Arts Center In NYC. At the age of 17, she began training full time at AMDA.
While in New York, Kellie appeared in numerous shows and workshops in (and around) the city. Some of her most memorable appearances include Off-Broadway workshops of The Kid Who Played the Palace and Anne of Green Gables, MTV’s Say What Karaoke, a New York Times Commercial and Starring as Becky Thatcher in the national tour of Tom Sawyer the Musical.
Now an antiques dealer by trade, Kellie operates a vintage boutique (costume & prop shop) in Pasadena where she lives with her Husband, Ben, and their 4.5 cats. Lately she has been spending most of her time writing and working with her band on an original album.
Kellie loves teaching at JAMZ and getting to see the coming generations fall in love with performing the same way she did!
Kellie Wisthoff
Jaydin Garnett
Jaydin began as a ballet dancer when she was three years old, with Anne Arundel County Rec and Parks. She joined JAMZ as a rec student two years later, and as a six-year-old she auditioned for the competition team. Jaydin has been a member of the team ever since. Currently, she is on both the Tech and Crew teams, and she has competed on both for the last eight years. Jaydin has won numerous awards and scholarships throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. She also specialized in Dance at the Performing and Visual Arts magnet school at Brooklyn Park. There she was named an All-County dancer two years in a row. Jaydin is now a member of her high school’s Senior Dance Company. In addition, she has been president of the JAMZ chapter of the National Honor Society for Dance Arts for the last two years. As Jaydin grew up at the studio, she always loved helping out with the younger students. She has helped run summer camps, assisted with classes, taught company audition combos, and helped choreograph award winning dance routines. For the past three years Jaydin has been an assistant to Ms. Giana, the Artistic Director at JAMZ. In 2020 Jaydin assisted in co-choreographing a competition routine with Ms. Giana named “Nicest Kids in Town which ended the season as National Grand Champions, Battle of the Stars Champions, and Showmanship winner.” She is looking forward to branching out as she does more teaching and choreographing – in addition to dancing – this year at JAMZ!
